The AI Crisis Is Coming: Have Your Midlife Reckoning Now, Not Later

The Conversation That Sparked This

I was watching a conversation with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman about AI and job loss. Buried in the comments was a familiar line: “Not everyone wants to be entrepreneurial.”

It's true. Most people aren't wired to chase big risks or grind like founders. After a decade in the same career, the inertia is real. You can't just flip a switch and become a high-agency builder overnight.

But that doesn't mean people are incapable. Most simply don't have space. Without a safety net, without time to breathe, without freedom from constant money stress, how do you even locate your passions–let alone build on them? That kind of introspection isn't a weekend hack. It takes silence, permission and margin.

Let AI Buy Us Breathing Room

If AI becomes competent enough to replace most jobs, I want it to become compassionate enough to help the people doing those jobs. Not by padding the portfolios of the top one percent, but by giving families with mortgages, school fees and credit card debt genuine breathing room.

Imagine AI-backed infrastructure that let you take three quiet months to discover what you actually care about. Space to journal, prototype, rest, and hear your own voice again. That's the promise if we design this technology with humans at the centre.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: maybe we shouldn't wait for AI, UBI, or enlightened policy. Maybe we need to create the crisis ourselves.

Have the Midlife Crisis Now

Why wait until you're 48 and laid off by ageism, or 60 and retired wondering what it was all for? Have the midlife crisis now–the one about meaning, purpose, faith, community and identity.

Wrestle with those questions in your 20s and 30s while you still have the agility to pivot and the energy to experiment. These aren't quick prompts. They demand time, iteration and the courage to dismantle the path you're on if it no longer serves you.

The old autopilot–school, job, retirement, done–is already crumbling. So lean into the liberating truth: do the existential reckoning early.

Work Shouldn't Be Something to Endure

We spend most of our lives either working or sleeping, yet we treat work–the experience that defines 40 to 60 years of our existence–as something we can shrug off because it pays the bills. We joke about hating Mondays like it's harmless. It isn't. Low standards for work erode how we see ourselves.

Traditional jobs trade security for the loss of upside. You rarely capture the full value of what you create, so motivation withers. Meanwhile, those “safe” corporate gigs are shrinking: benefits cut, layoffs rising. The system is nudging us toward agency whether we asked for it or not.

A Future Worth Fighting For

I want AI to jolt our collective consciousness. To empower more people to live high-agency lives, to stop sleepwalking through decades of their one precious life. If it takes a crisis to wake us up, let's make it intentional.

The future shouldn't be about replacing humans; it should be about freeing them–to ask better questions, to build things that matter, to live deliberately instead of by default.

Watch the full Reid Hoffman conversation for context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbbG0RSkpFw

That clip isn't just about automation. It's a mirror. It asks whether we're willing to use the tools in front of us to design a better life–or keep outsourcing that responsibility to employers, policymakers or the mythical “later.”

If disruption is inevitable, let's steer it toward freedom: financial room to breathe, mental clarity to explore and communities that reward contribution over compliance. That's the disruption worth fighting for.